Vacation brain food

One thing I try to do on vacation is “tune up my brain.” Bill Gates taught me this because he’d take a stack of books on vacation and read them. On my vacation, just concluded, I read most of Inside the Plex, by Steven Levy. A book about Google. It is an awesome book and I wish I had Steven’s talent. Since I don’t, though, I needed to tune up my brain and see what I could learn by hanging out with some awesomely smart people.

http://cinch.fm/cinchplayerext.swf

First I visited Stephen Jones. He’s a famous restaurant designer. I always love talking with him because he thinks about materials and light and how people entertain themselves in a whole new light. This conversation didn’t disappoint as he talks about China and a variety of topics.

Then I visited Dan Meis. He’s a world-famous architect who designs sports stadiums around the world. You’ll know his work if you see a baseball game in Seattle’s Safeco Field or a basketball game at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. I always am inspired by how big he thinks, which is why I started the conversation asking about something small he designed lately. Of course he switched the topic to discussing what he’s working on now: a soccer stadium for a future World Cup in Qatar.

The next week I visited Vizio (you already saw that visit in a previous post) to learn more about 3D, then visited Oakley to learn more about the latest in 3D glasses (hint: they are selling far better than they expected, I learned from execs there, which shows that 3D TV is indeed taking off, just not with the tech press). While there I got a good look at a new custom printing technology they built, which shows how custom products can be in the future.

If you were watching my wife’s Facebook feed you’d know that we got lots of beach time, along with time at LegoLand and Disneyland too. Great times and my brain is buzzing with new ideas to bring back to my work at Rackspace.